The Personality Factor That Makes Some Violent Criminals So Dangerous

Violent offenders who are also psychopaths are so dangerous because their brains do not learn normally from either punishments or rewards, a new study finds.

Published in The Lancet Psychiatry, the research scanned the brains of violent offenders, some of whom were psychopaths, others not.

Of the 50 people in the study, 12 were psychopathic offenders, 20 non-psychopathic offenders and 18 healthy non-offenders.

"When these violent offenders completed neuropsychological tasks, they failed to learn from punishment cues, to change their behaviour in the face of changing contingencies, and made poorer quality decisions despite longer periods of deliberation."